Speaking Creativity

Became a member of the British Council Library, a month back or so, which also gives access to its online services. Logged in to see whats in store. They had a discussion forum running, the topic was about Human Creativity, and the admin there gave instructions to people to tell their stories about how they unleashed their creative powers. And what almost all participants did was, defined creativity bookishly, giving others examples apart from theirs, pathetic, even the admin would have been bored. Well let others be, here's my contribution:

Last semester we had a subject called Power Plant Engineering, and in the first lecture our professor made us aware of the energy needs of our country.That made me think of how to get power thru a non-conventional means (i.e. without oil, petrol).
Well, one option would be Swades styled small reservoirs with turbine generators, after thinking for a few days (and nights, yes!), I came up with a new innovation of a giant wheel with an array of windmills on it, these windmills rotate as the giant wheel is made to rotate with magnetic levitation of permanent magnets. This would eventually give out power for a life time once installed.
The very next day i showed this idea to my professor and she rejected it as a perpetual motion machine (PMM) and said it was impossible to manufacture and test a PMM !
Well that bug is still in me and i m going to simulate it on a computer, in the near future !

Some reader from Delhi gave me a nice suggestion, here it is:

Yes .... you'll learn the difference between science (= truth) and imagination / idealization ( = daydreams).
If you've read Karl Popper .... he says the same thing about PMM. Apparently, one of his professors told him 'Yes, everybody says it's impossible until somebody goes ahead and builds one ' !!
Fact is : There are laws of the Universe that cannot be broken. These laws are discovered from time to time. They are subject to change when new behaviours are discovered. But till such time as they are proved false, the non-feasibility of a PMM will take you a lifetime to prove to yourself !!
Required reading for Pushkar Sheth: The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

Well, got to find that book !!

Heres one poem which Robin Williams mentions in a movie called Dead Poet's Society.

I. O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring.
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red!
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

II. O captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up! For you the flag is flung, for you the bugle trills:
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths, for you the shores a-crowding:
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning.
O Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

III. My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won!
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead

by Walt Whitman

Its Festivities Time

This month its festivities time with Dassera (the Nine Day Festival), and then now, Diwali. Diwali also means guests coming home to greet and get together. Hey I am not writing the same essay we used to write in school for all the ten years. Guests means uncles and aunties coming home and enjoying goodies, which eventually even I get to enjoy, and mom knows best how to cook stuff, with closed eyes. That is why when theres a power cut, the menu at dinner is Maharashtrian style onion pakodas and batata wadas, which will be put up on fudlog immediately after the next power cut. And the pakodas seem authentically Maharashtrian cause my mother's sister got married to a Maharashtrian, and most of the recipe source code originates from there. Want more of pakodas, try Mumbai-Pune Expressway's Food Mall, awesome pakodas right in the middle of nowhere on the huge road!! Then its time for Naturals Icecream, OMG, its the ultimate treat !! And the newspaper prints an article that doctors of the city say bursting crackers this Diwali will cause all the Dengue causing mosquitoes fly away. Hmm and what about the humans and other animals?. Doctors. Start making crackers, .....medicated. (full stop). This post kinda seems small (and justified ;-) ) , have my viva exams right after Diwali.

One fine day at college

Its not that I am attending my college after years, go there everyday, but yesterday was a bit different, filled with everything !! Here it goes. Woke up at 0430 hrs, had two tests in the day with a one hour time gap. Business Process Re-engineering followed by Manufacturing Planning and Control. BPR is my elective subject for the final year, and is an interesting subject, full of case studies, we learning re-engineering before we become engineers !! Studied a little for BPR, then again slept at about 0700 hrs to be woken up my mom at eight. Got ready to leave, reached college at 0845 hrs, to find every thing empty again ! The BPR test was scheduled at 10 and people were expected to come JIT. Sat in my classroom with a few pages spread on the desk, kept reading, gave the test went to the class again, tried to read some of MPC, again went for the test, finished. The professor who took the test wanted to talk to my friend and me about some project after lunch, my friend didn't want to face him cause he hadn't slept for the whole night, had to tell him to wait, went home had lunch and ran back again. My friend was still there, and what the prof did when i went back? he made me to go through 10 PDF files which were research papers on BPR. No wonder my pal didn't want to meet him The thing I realized out of reading those PDFs was that people were looking into the BPR world seriously and there were people after Hammer and Champy to write papers on BPR, which we thought was a subject untouched after those two. Good thing at least 39 from our class will get to go through such literature, but this was surely time consuming. Fought with that friend of mine for a while, left the college campus with a group of hostel people, got a rickshaw went to the gym. Aaaah this rick driver was sort of funny, one scooter guy just lost his balance and came right in front of my rick, this rick guy started his talk, dunno why he talked intermittently, here it is in Hindi and English.
eh . too . dekh . ke . chala . nai . sakta . kidhar . bhi . jaa . raha . hai . pagal . aadmi . (full stops after every word, yes...intermittent, u see!)
hey can't you see and drive, goin any where you crazy man.
Came home from the gym, laffed about the rickshaw guy's style, slept. Wasn't it a fine day after all, I feel almost all days are the same ;-) !

More knee deep treats

Aaaah...last week, Kolkata had a knee deep treat, this week, its Mumbai's turn again, last month it was Gujerat. Well, if some of you here in Mumbai observed for the last three days, it starts raining at just about 10:30 PM, and a few days back, those of you who wake up early, the clouds are yellowish at about 05:45 AM and it starts raining after this cloud formation, it had become kinda of trend for a few days. Also this time, the rains have extended than their normal period. On what I feel as a related topic, the climate scientists say "the Earth came close to the warmest it has been in the last million years. This happens in many places, especially in a part of the Pacific Ocean, where El Nino weather patterns are born. What is El Nino? Is it a Mexican delicacy? Well, the El Ninos can push temperatures higher than they might ordinarily be. They blamed this phenomenon on global warming that is affecting the surface of the western Pacific before it affects the deeper water." Enough of the Pacific now.
Global Warming reports in India are restricted only up to journalist reports, where the concerned person at the MET department are asked a few text book questions and they answer it in broken English and a lots of blah blah. I don't think any of the weather bureau guys are checking out the global warming patterns in our country. Or is the research really "global" and we are not being told whether we are getting warmer, or are we going through those El Ninos, NooNoos or NeeNees? Yes I felt an El Nino once before i read about it, one moment its hot, we all are feeling hot then the temperature goes down a little bit and the atmosphere is sort of pleasant, or rather it starts raining. (sort of exaggerated there, but this did happen once). Got to find out if our weather bureau is taking care of Global Warming and stuff.
More...Global warming has always been a last chapter content in most of the textbooks I have read so far. It has commonly been a topic for a small project right from school times. It can be given more importance if it is introduced as a full fledged subject in the curriculum. These days, my college professors are being more aware and taking Global warming into consideration, like, the finance professor gives an example of a company closing down in Mumbai after 4 years cause it simply went under water, and it shifted base in Madhya Pradesh, where it made losses and sank !! And the IC engines professor is more concerned in making the car pollution free rather than making it run faster, or give better average. Global warming is left out as a regular Google project and no one I know around is actually working on it. Or is any one working on it?
This is how the picture gets during the rains :L: this is technically after the rains took a pause for a week, the municipality took efforts to raze two road side tea shops !!
R: aahh...this is during the second deluge that washed out Mumbai.